4 ms·

I never get to see same smoothness in graphics and fonts as MacOS/Windows/ChromeOS in the same machine with Linux. Every single time I decide that I'm moving t

I never get to see same smoothness in graphics and fonts as MacOS/Windows/ChromeOS in the same machine with Linux. Every single time I decide that I'm moving to Linux, I give up after living with the browsers for a day or two. Rendering and fonts are just inferior to other systems in my experience.

microcolonel 9y ago
> I never get to see same smoothness in graphics and fonts as MacOS/Windows/ChromeOS in the same machine with Linux. Well, Chrome OS runs the same stuff as your average Linux distro, however maybe most distros don't turn on subpixel antialiasing in their FontConfig out of the box. (I don't know because I've been sharing configs between machines of the same distro for about five years).
- pjmlp 9y ago
  ChromeOS uses Chrome own rendering engine, based on Skia. https://www.chromium.org/blink/slimming-paint https://www.chromium.org/blink/slimming-paint https://www.chromium.org/developers/design-documents/gpu-accelerated-compositing-in-chrome https://www.chromium.org/developers/design-documents/gpu-acc... Skia can only use what the underlying graphics drivers offer.
- vetinari 9y ago
  Some distros do not enable subpixel rendering indeed, due to patents and them being based in the US. The users have to download a -freeworld package then, if they want it. With HiDPI, that doesn't matter anyway. Another issue are fonts themselves. If you have a document that uses Arial or Cambria or another proprietary font, and you don't have it installed, you are going to get something substituted, which may or may be not metrics-compatible. Do not expect pixel-identical results then.
  - microcolonel 9y ago
    > patents and them being based in the US If I'm not mistaken, those patents are dead now. Even Fedora has the freeworld stuff now. > Another issue are fonts themselves. If you have a document that uses Arial or Cambria or another proprietary font, and you don't have it installed, you are going to get something substituted, which may or may be not metrics-compatible. Do not expect pixel-identical results then. Yeah, though the Chrome OS core fonts are good metric-compatible substitutes for Arial and friends (though lacking the stylistic variety of the core Windows fonts).
    - vetinari 9y ago
      The bytecode interpreter patents are dead now. Not the subpixel rendering ones ("cleartype"). In Fedora, FT_CONFIG_OPTION_SUBPIXEL_RENDERING is still disabled. Google also released metric compatible substitutes for Cambria (Caladea) and Calibri (Carlito), but Linux distributions do not install them by default. Edit: I'm wrong. In F27, the subpixel rendering is enabled.

microcolonel 9y ago

> I never get to see same smoothness in graphics and fonts as MacOS/Windows/ChromeOS in the same machine with Linux. Well, Chrome OS runs the same stuff as your average Linux distro, however maybe most distros don't turn on subpixel antialiasing in their FontConfig out of the box. (I don't know because I've been sharing configs between machines of the same distro for about five years).

pjmlp 9y ago
ChromeOS uses Chrome own rendering engine, based on Skia. https://www.chromium.org/blink/slimming-paint https://www.chromium.org/blink/slimming-paint https://www.chromium.org/developers/design-documents/gpu-accelerated-compositing-in-chrome https://www.chromium.org/developers/design-documents/gpu-acc... Skia can only use what the underlying graphics drivers offer.
vetinari 9y ago
Some distros do not enable subpixel rendering indeed, due to patents and them being based in the US. The users have to download a -freeworld package then, if they want it. With HiDPI, that doesn't matter anyway. Another issue are fonts themselves. If you have a document that uses Arial or Cambria or another proprietary font, and you don't have it installed, you are going to get something substituted, which may or may be not metrics-compatible. Do not expect pixel-identical results then.
- microcolonel 9y ago
  > patents and them being based in the US If I'm not mistaken, those patents are dead now. Even Fedora has the freeworld stuff now. > Another issue are fonts themselves. If you have a document that uses Arial or Cambria or another proprietary font, and you don't have it installed, you are going to get something substituted, which may or may be not metrics-compatible. Do not expect pixel-identical results then. Yeah, though the Chrome OS core fonts are good metric-compatible substitutes for Arial and friends (though lacking the stylistic variety of the core Windows fonts).
  - vetinari 9y ago
    The bytecode interpreter patents are dead now. Not the subpixel rendering ones ("cleartype"). In Fedora, FT_CONFIG_OPTION_SUBPIXEL_RENDERING is still disabled. Google also released metric compatible substitutes for Cambria (Caladea) and Calibri (Carlito), but Linux distributions do not install them by default. Edit: I'm wrong. In F27, the subpixel rendering is enabled.